Last Good Days
by SigmaTheta
Summary: Claire and Topher at the end of the world. Spoilers for Epitaph One.


Claire can understand why Caroline felt the need to put a bullet through Adelle's heart. Anger, obviously, but also the fact that many of the people here would follow Adelle's word without question. Divided loyalties are dangerous on a long journey. It was a practical choice.

Still, she could have done without seeing anymore blood spilled within these walls.

While the preparations are being made, Claire draws a cloth over the body, puts her hands in the pockets of her lab coat, and asks the obvious question. "What about Topher?"

Paul exchanges a look with Caroline and whispers, "How bad is he?"

She sighs. "He won't be able to hold a gun or defend himself. He might not even be able to keep up." She doesn't bear the same grudge against Topher, sees him as another victim, but she is still practical.

There is a pill bottle full of antipsychotic medication in her pocket, and Claire takes it out and rolls it between her hands. "I can stay here," she says.

Caroline balks. "You can't do that."

"Topher would be a liability on your journey, and he can't take care of himself anymore. I can take care of him here." She looks Caroline in the eye, an unnerving move for how rarely she does it. "I have to stay anyway. There are people who left. I need to wait until they come back."

Caroline tilts her head. "You'll lose your mind here."

"I know."

* * *

Topher is leaning halfway out of the pod and playing with a lit candle, flicking his fingers through the flame and pouring the melted wax out onto the floor. With the click of Claire's shoes, he looks up. "It's very quiet now."

"Everybody left."

He nods a few times. "I didn't like everybody, anyway," he mumbles. "Ms. Adelle?"

There is a little bit of blood on the edge of Claire's lab coat, and she wishes now that she had taken it off. "She left, too."

"Oh." Topher turns around and sinks back into the pod until only the top of his head is visible above the rim.

Claire comes closer and sits down next to him, letting her feet dangle over the edge. "I didn't leave."

Topher curls an arm around one of her legs and leans his forehead against her knee. She hears him sniffle and gently brushes her fingers through his hair.

* * *

It's not a big change, really. Claire hardly ever spoke to anyone who wasn't injured, and looking after Topher always took up a large part of her time anyway. This is just adding a few more hours.

He's less cooperative without Adelle around. She drags her cot across from her office to set it up near Topher's space and get him more comfortable with her, but she still has to force feed him his medicine most days.

Some days he won't take it at all.

He kicks and thrashes and fights, sobbing and screaming, until all she can do is crawl into the pod with him and hold him tight. She traps his arms against her chest and presses his head to her shoulder until he can only shake and squirm, terrified that if she lets go he'll bite through his tongue or crack his skull on the hard corners of the room.

Crack. Gone. No more Topher, as little of him is left.

* * *

Some days she doesn't bother to crawl out of his pod to go to sleep.

* * *

On his good days, she takes him up to one of the old offices. High above ground is still nearly as safe as underground, though the light and open air put her on edge. They sit behind the rotting wood of the desk and stare through the broken window at the ruined city.

(Sometimes she misjudges a good day, and Topher looks down and starts repeating _my city my city my city_, and she has to drag him away from the window and pull him back downstairs.)

Topher sits close to her, closer than he ever used to when he was still sane and she had still decided to hate him. "Claire, how come you didn't leave?" he asks, and she can barely understand him with his face tucked in the crook of his arm.

She glances over at him in surprise, because he calls her _Dr. Saunders_ most days, _Whiskey _on the bad days when he's afraid of her, and nothing at all on the days when he forgets who she is, but he never calls her _Claire_. She hesitates before offering an explanation. "Some of our friends left a long time ago. I need to wait for them to come back, so I can tell them where to go."

"Boyd?" he asks, and the hopeful note in his voice nearly kills her.

"Maybe."

"Waiting for Boyd." He nods slowly. "You'll get married and have scowly babies," he says, and she could swear he is almost smirking.

Claire smiles slightly, and when he decides to lean tiredly against her shoulder, she places her hand against his back to keep him steady. "That's right."

His voice is muffled against her shirt now. "If we got married, our babies wouldn't be scowly."

She sighs and drums her fingers against his shoulder. "I don't think you'd let them be."

Topher shakes his head and gathers up the fabric of her sleeve in his hand.

* * *

Topher dies on a Friday.

There are no calendars in the Dollhouse, but Claire is sure it was a Friday because she took a shower. Back when the Dollhouse was more refugee camp than ruin, Friday was her assigned shower day, and she continued to count out the seven-day interval long after it was necessary.

(She knows she could have miscounted, easily. It's been many, many Fridays. But _Topher dies on a Friday_ is more definite, more real than simply _Topher dies_.)

She pads quickly and quietly across the floor from the shower area, hair dripping water onto her shoulders, and discovers that Topher has figured out how to open the prescription bottles on his own.

No, she thinks, _figured out_ is not giving him enough credit. Even in his madness, Topher was far too clever. Maybe this was a decision, of how and when to die, of dying while you still know who you are. Topher _decided to remember_ how to open the prescription bottles on his own, and he decided while she was out of the room.

She lays him out in his sleeping pod while he is still warm. (They always did look like coffins to Claire.) She puts as many of his things as she can comfortably fit in around him, lights every candle in the room, and slides the pod's glass panel back into place.

She thinks it's a Friday in the Fall.

* * *

Company is company.

Claire is still the sanest person in the Dollhouse, but she's also the craziest.

* * *

For three days, she sits on the floor of the imprint room and stares at the chair. She doesn't pull the cover off until the second day.

The interface is simpler now. Claire worked together with Ivy to streamline it when it became clear they were losing Topher fast. (She's another one who's gone, Ivy, but she won't be one who comes back.) Claire has always known far too much about the technology.

The wedges are less important now, just hard copies. As Claire settles into the chair, she thinks that most of the process could be done without even getting up. All of her wiped away in a flash, bits of her left floating in the chair and on wedges.

She still needs to wait.

Her fingers hover over the control panel.


End file.
